“You must be a Californian”
“Why?”
“You couldn’t throw that sachet away.”
This conversation was with a Ghanaian-American friend who had just met me and saw me look around in frustration before stuffing my empty water sachet bag into my purse, where I already a collection of bags from previous unsuccessful attempts to find trashcans. He had lived in California for years and laughed, telling me that he couldn’t throw things away either. It made me wonder, how exactly did the message to not litter get so ingrained in me? More than a general concern for the environmental damage and destruction that trash can do, I’m pretty sure I’m motivated by a fear of what other people around me would think if they saw me toss my trash on the ground. At home, I imagine that there would be a collective social disapproval and people would be shocked and critical.
But that social pressure doesn’t exist here, and I noticed it was absent in Mumbai as well. In fact, I remember carrying around an ice cream wrapper in market and this little kid followed me around trying to teach me that I should just throw it down. He would grab the wrapper and fling it aside and I kept picking it up and scouring the scene for a trashcan or box or bag.
My friend brian had an interesting observation on the topic. He said that maybe the act of throwing things down used to be fine, when food wasn’t packaged and plastics weren’t an issue. When we eat oranges here, (which are sold with the topics cut off so that you don’t peel them at all but squeeze the pulpy juice out until it’s sucked dry) we toss aside the peel and watch as goats fight to nibble up the pieces. So it’s easy to imagine how that action could become ingrained and be transferred to plastic water sachets and wrappers and bags.
“They can laugh because we get served first.” - Me
Rebecca and I were at the university hospital because she thought she might have malaria. There were three or four other people in the waiting room when we got there, but I assumed that they, like me, were just waiting for their friends. Becks got seen pretty quickly and everyone in the room laughed as she fumbled with the door – it seemed kind of unnecessary and even rude at the time. Until we realized that even though one of the guys in the waiting room was seriously sick and having something like an asthma attack and everyone else was sick too and had been waiting to be seen before we got there. It’s not the first time this has happened either – other obruni friends have stories of being seen immediately at hospitals even though there was obviously a lot of people ahead of them. It put their laughter in a different light – a bitter reaction to being treated so obviously unfairly.
“I’ve never felt more aware of having black skin.”
-Naa
My friend Naa is a fifth year Ghanaian student who I met in my Econ class. She studied abroad in Russia for a year, so it’s been really cool to talk to her about her experiences there and how they parallel mine. It sounds like it was the first time she’s really experienced racism – people telling her to go back to Africa and the like. Which made me think about the assumptions people make about me because of my race – (I’m definitely an oburoni, but I’ve gotten everything from Indian, to Japanese, and from Mexican to African American!). and even though it’s been frustrating to be categorically stereotyped, it’s still a powerful, privileged stereotype. Some people make snide comments or are intentionally rude, but at the end of the day, we both know that my skin color gives me a lot of opportunities and words are just words.
“The state has failed in Africa. The market has failed in America. So which one do you trust? Neither!” Prof KJ
“The cocoa board buys 1 bag of cocoa for 1 GH cedi then gives 1,000 sacks to their friends who can sell them for 50-60 GH cedi. For some people, they get 1,000 sacks/week!” Prof KJ
One of my friends responded to this story by telling us about his job in one of the government’s ministries. He was in charge of something to do with revenue, and found a lot of holes in the system where people were funneling money away for themselves. So he tried to clean it up, and within a month, revenue was up 100%, and kept rising. Some people praised him. Until he got a call in the middle of the night, telling him that if he valued his life, he had better stop. So he did. And now, he admitted, he even takes a little himself, because, everyone else is and that’s how it works.
“I have a small garden in my backyard and I was watering it one day with the treated water that gets pumped to my house. I realized that between the crops in my garden and the people in my village, the cassava drinks better water than my chief!”
Prof KJ
“In my village, there is a rock in the sea, and people see it as the god of the village. Every year they sacrifice a dog there. There are a lot of fish there, but the villagers don’t fish them because they don’t want to anger the god.”
Prof KJ
“every district got TVs, because some big businessman was selling tractors (even if they didn’t’ need them) and then saw that the price that was deducted from the TV could’ve bought them three TVs!”
Prof KJ
As crazy and frustrating as this is, it sounded familiar. The same thing happens in the US, with military suppliers destroying their own products so that they can be paid to replace them at a huge profit… and did you know that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton was involved in the biggest corruption scandal in Nigeria? Which is saying a lot… they paid $180 million in bribes to secure contracts for a $6 billion deal. Halliburton’s 3rd leading executive has testified against himself and the company…
“We buy things small small. They used to break up match boxes and sell them in little bundles so that you could recycles your old matchboxes and just buy the few matches that you needed.” Prof JS
“Costco is a huge store for wealthy people. You can buy your whole year’s supply of anything there. You need to have a card to be able to shop there, so my friends would take me. I could’ve gotten lost in there.”
- Prof JS
It’s true that this professor is a little old fashioned and given to exaggeration. But still, it was so interesting to hear this perspective. To me, Costco is a place that you shop if you’re low- to middle-class and trying to save money by buying in bulk. Rich people would never shop at Costco. But apparently, having the ability to invest in a whole year’s supply of anything implies that you have enough extra money to be able to make that investment. In contrast, poorer people who have to live more day to day cannot reap the benefits of wholesale prices because they have to buy things in single serving sizes. Both here and in Mumbai, there are a lot of small packaged products, like shampoo and coffee and 10 cent sacks of flour and butter. When Rebecca and I went to buy a wheel of laughing cow cheese (8 wedges of cheese, each costing 20 cents) at one of the shops on campus, they didn’t know how much to charge us – apparently no one here buys cheese by the wheel! It’s crazy how you need to have a certain amount of money to be able to save money. Even in America, things like banking and groceries are more expensive in poor areas. …
“Market women have good logic. Charge the rich a lot and give discounts to the poor. In the US, they charge you all the same, rich and poor.”
Prof JS
I would have always thought that I was a big supporter of Robin Hood – but when you’re on the other side of the redistribution it suddenly doesn’t feel that heroic or noble anymore. But this attitude has helped me be less frustrated by ‘oburoni prices.’
“They incorrectly charged me a $50 fine and I’m still waiting to be reimbursed. You can take it all because I know that you are suffering under this sub-prime thing.”
Prof JS
This reminds me of a scene from an incredible play about Nigeria – the white playwright talks about being approached by a man asking for money while he was sitting down with a nigerian associate. The playwright said “No, I don’t’ have any money to give you.” Then the beggar turned to the Nigerian who gave him some money. The beggar turned to the white playwright, gave him the change, and said, “Here you go, now you have money.”
The dynamics of who has the power to give and who receives are so interesting… I’m coming to believe less and less in money aid. What does it do to a national psyche to always receive hand outs from “First World” countries, and grow up knowing that you are poor and “Third World”?
“I was staying in L.A. in an apartment the university arranged for me. There was a contraception above the door with a hole in it, and remember being angry that they had installed a camera to watch me. I stood on a chair and taped a piece of paper over it so that they wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. Then, one day, a friend came to visit. Shocked, he asked “Kwesi, why did you do this? If there’s a fire, this smoke detector won’t work!”
It’s nice to know that cultural misunderstanding go both ways – I’ve definitely grown a lot more humble after living in somewhere not familiar to me. But as hilarious as this story is – it’s kind of crazy that this professor thought someone would videotape him in his own apartment – and even crazier that he didn’t get more outraged about it if that’s what he really thought was going on.
The US embassy felt like home. It felt efficient and fast and clean and organized and I knew exactly how to behave and what to expect. I walked past benches full on Ghanaians, who I guessed were applying for visas. This whole experience has made me realize how deeply American I am. I used to want to live and work abroad, but I’m thinking more and more that I will be happier and more effective if I stay in the US. One of my friends here put it well:
There are so many people who don’t have the opportunity to put on a suit and gain access to powerful positions in America. But you do. Are you just going to throw that opportunity away?
I still admire all of the people who do work ‘on the ground’ – (what would Prof. Hart say about that language? Doesn’t everyone work ‘on the ground,’ and why are some places considered local while others are constructed as global?) but I think that’s it’s not for me.
Just that realization alone would have made this whole trip worthwhile.
